I have always been puzzled that when it comes to sending a note which contains sub-pages, either by mail, or to a printer, OneNote desktop won’t include the sub-pages automatically : you first have to expand the sub-pages, select the range of pages you want to send, and then select the intended way of sending (printer or mail).

Disappointment : it’s no better in OneNote for W10 unfortunately !

In OneNote for W10, there is a new feature called “Multiple Select”, so I thought I could at least do it the old way… Nope !

Note that the first two pages were not selected, but two additional notes, below the sub-pages were included in the multiple select !?

Buggy : this may be a bug(and obviously it’s not happening consistently), but it’s pretty annoying indeed !

I also noticed that the first page selected (in a multiple select) shows a border. I am sure it was not intended, or didn’t catch the purpose yet :

This time the multiple select worked well ! but note the gray border around the selected page. Note also that the commands in the Home menu are greyed (disabled).

Finally, when printing a page with lots of stuff, the output may be spread over several sheets. In OneNote desktop, although the options are not numerous, it tries to fit the content into a single page, and let you choose the orientation and paper size (so you can choose A3 if needed).

Disappointment : There is no such options in OneNote for W10…

Coming back to the « digital » way of sharing notes (that is, through the Cloud), I am aware that OneNote for W10 offers a wider range of options than its elder brother : namely, to share individual pages.

Expectation : Now that Sections (and Section Groups) are smartly handled in OneNote for W10, I am eager to get the ability to share individual sections as well. That would really be a game changer !

But sharing involves two ways : sending and receiving !

OneNote for W10 is now able to receive much more content than ever, in a convenient way, thanks to the « Send to OneNote » printer.

It’s an add-in available in the Store, which brings the ability to « print » from any UWP App or win32 Program directly to OneNote for W10 (the same feature existed in OneNote desktop, and was lacking in the so called « modern » version).

Patience : be aware that you need Windows’ Creators Update to install it !

The short description highlights accessibility improvements, instead of the core feature of the add-in…

Difference : The only difference I noticed is that the resulting pages are stored in a note container, and each page appears as a picture. In OneNote desktop, the « pictures » are set as background by default (customizable), which prevent from moving then accidentally, when you annotate them. But some users may prefer the other way round.

Finally, I also use to copy content from the web, and paste it into OneNote.

Lack of customisation options : The text (or single word) copied from the web always comes with a short description and a link to his source. That may be useful when doing extensive search on the internet, but I use an ERP (« Enterprise Ressource Planning » software) whose data, when copied from its screen, are interpreted by OneNote as web content (it may be exhibited using .NET, hence OneNote’ behaviour). Thus, I’d like to be able to disable this feature as I did in OneNote desktop…

We are done for today !

Come back tomorrow for more.

Update June : The new UI is no more “experimental” ! Things have been honed further, and are available to anyone. The “multiple select” issue has been fixed. See this blog post about the broad release of this new version.

Update 23/10/2017 : Printout are inserted as images in the background by default in OneNote desktop, but this is customizable there (see Mike Tholfsen’ Tweet). It isn’t in OneNote UWP unfortunately.

Update 28/03/2018 : No more “single page” sharing. It seems that sharing a page this way made the page public and even indexed on Google search, which was a concern… I crossed out the respective paragraph mentioning this specific feature. Too bad !